brought contempt from people of distinction, who nevertheless behaved to her just as formerly. She was thrown into a fit of hysterics by a neighbouring woman, hardly a hair's breadth lower in the world than herself, who had the assurance to sit down beside her, as she had a hundred times done, ere Pasibula's brother became a great man. 180. One should naturally think, that the vanity of a beautiful woman must arise from the consciousness of her fine face and person; yet there is nothing she studies so carefully, nor is at such expense for, as to disguise both, and turn herself into a monster, wherein nature is industriously defaced, and the extravagance of fashion set out to view. Were it not for this humour in women, we men should be more enslaved to them than we are. 181. The painter who drew a Venus by his mistress, was surprised to find hardly any one could like the piece. In like manner you are surprised at my reasoning and talking in a different manner from you, but ought not to be, for if you are Cœlia'd in matters of opinion, I am Clarissa'd, and why not? 182. I once found a lady with her right hand bathed in blood, and asking her the reason, she said she had got a catarh in that hand, and was bathing it in the blood of a black cat, as a sovereign remedy for the humour, which had its appellation on that account, from the name of that animal. It was to no purpose to assure her, that cat is an English, and catarh a Greek word, of no analogy in the meaning. It is well if many other opinions, not only in physic, but theology and politics, are not of an original as uncouth and far-fetched as this. 183. There are single sounds, which naturally strike the ear in an agreeable manner. The inventors of music have found the way so to compound the higher and lower notes of the same, or different instruments, as to carry this pleasure still farther. There are two degrees of pleasure perceived in music. The first is that which tickles the ear only with a chime of notes, which having a sort of abstracted affinity to one another, like that of numbers in mere arithmetical proportions, but without meaning, that is, without reference to any thing, but the mere sense of hearing, communicates a small degree of pleasure. To be at all entertained by this, we must have a metaphysical relish for the natural agreements of sounds. Nature gives, as it were, a hint of this, and habit carries it farther. The whole of this pleasurable sensation proceeds from a perception of this agreement, and differs not from that which we feel from other philosophical discoveries of similarity or uniformity. We are pleased with the music, because it shews us, that there is a natural adjustment in sounds, which at first seem so unconnected. This the mind catches in the ear only, for it penetrates no farther, as it does light and colours in the eye, into which they are refracted through a prism. It may be doubted, whether there is any other pleasure received in either case, than what arises from the mere gratification of curiosity. Our modern music is mostly of this unmeaning and unaffecting kind. It is seated almost wholly in the ear, and hardly ever goes farther, but through habit. The other degree in musical entertainment strikes deeper into the mind, and while it carries with it all the mere auditory pleasure, just mentioned, speaks to, and entertains our affections also. It is the object of an internal sense, as well as of an external. It is heard by love, by anger, by fear, by courage; or it is felt by the soul, as played on the strings of that instrument, which is placed nearest to her preceptive powers; and perhaps ought to be considered as a unison or concert, executed at once between a violin without and another within. Somewhat of this we perceive in a few of Corelli's compositions, and in more of Handel's. But our musicians affect too great a variety of notes in each tune, and aim not, or but a very little, at a meaning. Their pieces gingle prettily, but seldom speak, as the much simpler music of the ancients undoubtedly did. Some of their effects are on record, I do not mean in fabulous, but in true history, which our present art can by no means come nigh to, such as the power of David over Saul, of Timotheus over Alexander, and of the Salii, who could driye their hearers into distraction. Enthusiastic preachers have studied the power of sounds, cadences, swells, pauses, more accurately, than our greatest masters of musical composition. A fellow otherwise ignorant, and uttering little else than nonsense, shall move an audience to what degree of passion he pleases, and throw several of them into convulsions. This he does wholly by an art of managing sounds, for he deals not in sense. I have heard notes made by a jack, a gate, or a car, which I thought capable of being brought to excellent purpose, into some species of harmony. It is to me no matter of doubt, whether a thorough genius for music, and accurately acquainted with the mechanical springs of thought, affection, passion, in the human make, might by closely copying, and judiciously introducing the select sounds of birds, beasts, thunder, but above all of mankind, in this or that passion, into a piece of music, calculated for a particular pathetic purpose, give us a musical performance, far exceeding in power all that have ever yet been performed or felt. The Grecian orators were wont to stop, in the midst of their harangues, to have a law read that was pertinent to the argument urged: If our preachers, when employed on a very moving subject, were to make a pause, and give a minute to the music for the performance of a short clause, taken from a psalm or hymn apropos, I conceive it might have an excellent effect. 184. We ought not to form an idea of, nor by any means fix a character for any man, from an observation made on one or two of his actions, unless those actions are most uncommonly good or evil, but from the general tenor of his life. Accident, or temptation, or surprise, sometimes hurry him beyond the command of his reason and his principles, and force him, as it were, to act below himself. Accidents, inducements, grace, sometimes prompt him with uncommon ardour to deeds of the noblest kind, and compel him, in some degree, to act above himself. By none of these can we fairly estimate the man. Besides, as most of our measures are taken, and our actions done, in concert with others, they are apt to partake of their understandings, principles, and passions, as well as of our own. Hence we frequently have the real characters of others given us, which, compared with our general conduct, fit us no better than their clothes. To judge of a man when he is carried out of himself by the impetuosity of some foreign cause, is much the same as to say, the air of a country is bad, because the weather was foul on that single day which we spent in it. To judge of a man by actions, wherein he is concerned with others, is like the English, to give Marlborough, and like the Germans, to give Eugene, all the glory of the campaigns made in Queen Anne's time. Were you to take a man by a single action, or by the effect of a mere accident, you would, with the Melitans, pronounce Paul a murderer, merely because a viper will bite, and a god too, because a man may happen not to die, though he hath been bitten. 185. Of all men Coenus hath the greatest fund of humour, and of all men gives it the greatest scope. There are few wits whose genius extends to all kinds of characters, actions, accidents, employments, personalities, &c. one is excellent at an alderman or a cit: another at matrimony with its appendages, the frailties of the fair sex, &c. Another, at religion and the clergy, on the strength of a talent confined wholly to church affairs. Each of these shines in a sphere of his own, but Coenus in all. Nothing ridiculous or ridiculeable escapes him; no man knows so well, on what part of a person, an action, a character, an imputative absurdity may be fastened. Other wits spare their own foibles in the rest of mankind, and always point their satire outward. But Coenus makes no more difficulty of laughing at his own follies, than at the burlesque pictures that hang on the walls of his stair-case. Void of shame himself, he lets you see he feels not yours. He will even do a silly thing for an introduction to his saying a witty one. He will participate as freely in the mirth of his company as in the wine, when both are at his own expense. Who shall furnish the occasion of a laugh, he cares not, if he supplies the jest. A young cat that plays with every thing in its way, often with its own tail, is the emblem of Conus. 186. It is nothing but the selfishness of an honest man which costs him liberty or his life, when accusation throws him into a jail, or murder into a grave; for had he been less tenacious of his pelf, the villain or the robber need not to have been obliged to use him so ill. It is hard, that people will not part with their substance by the milder methods of cheating and lawsuits, but must have it wrung from them by poison or a pistol. Could the villanous part of mankind, thoroughly and lastingly associate, no honest man would ever be worth a groat. But while villain preys on villain, and neither can have all, the honest picks up a little of his own, which drops between, and runs off with it. Two villains combined, like a pair of shears, cut every thing between, till they meet and cut each other, to an incapacity of doing farther mischief. It is our happiness, that a knave working by himself, can work but slowly, and joined with another, may be soon detected. 187. Those communities, such as the empire of China, wherein honour and deference are made to wait on office, are in a fairer way to be happy, than where family is permitted to detach them from power, and often to turn them against it. Wealth and honour, separated from civil authority, are the wens of a body politic, which detain a part of its substance and strength from the due course of circulation, whereby alone the health and vigour of the whole can be rightly promoted and supported. Were figure attached solely to civil power, it would not run down, as it does among us from the king to the peasant, and from the queen to the kitchen-wench, in a channel of expense and folly, so universally ruinous. A poor creature aiming at the splendour of others, much better fortuned, is like an apple-tree which planted among elms raised its head as high as they, but with a stem too small and feeble to keep it up to the years of maturity. Were there no such thing as nobility or gentry among us, this senseless, this ridiculous, this miserable emulation would be unknown and unfelt; we should have no lords nor ladies in miniature, no splendid beggars, no raggamuffin gentry. No attempts to pay the debts of pride by revolutions, no market of votes, of interest, of oaths, to support the dignity of a family, despicable for every other vice, as well as those sorts of prostitution. 188. God speaks to all men in that language which is gone out into all lands, and thereby proclaims himself, and the origin of all things, so clearly and loudly, that all that are disposed to listen and learn, may attain to a knowledge of him, themselves, and the world he hath created for them. The creation speaks of God, but men have not learnt its language, and unless God will speak to them in their own, he is not to be understood. Just so it is between men and dogs peculiarly; to be understood by that species, we |